


The Girl Who Burned

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7169093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Katniss is the Girl on Fire, she is the Girl Who Burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Burned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinlizzy2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/gifts).



You are maybe three when you first feel anxiety on reaping day. You don't know why, but it feels like someone has their hand in your chest and is holding your heart. It's supposed to be a holiday, with flowers and tiny bits of half-hearted color, but it feels more like a funeral.

You are eleven when Ash is reaped. He's three months older than you, but those three months fall over the reaping deadline. His mother starts crying as he stands on that stage and no one volunteers. He steps onto the train, shouting that he'll be back soon.

He never comes back alive. You're walking home when he dies. The path from school to the little house you live in goes right through Central Square, where the big screens are set up and blast the Games all the time. It's your birthday; you're wearing a brand new dress, red because the cloth was on sale and it's your favorite color, when you run into the crowd. It's like you've stepped into a photograph, the way everyone's frozen in place. Your eyes flick to the screens unbidden because Ingrid has been dead for a week at this point but Ash is left and Ash-

Ash is dead, his blue eyes still blankly fixed on the camera, his right middle and pointer fingers still at his temple in a goodbye salute. Later, you'll see what led up to that point, but you are still standing in front of the screens, too shocked to even scream.

You are not the type of child to cry, but your tears make lakes over Ash. You keep the last photo you have of him, a sweet one of the two of you together, in your pocket.

You are thirteen when they first send you to work as a climber and a spotter, thirteen and hard and bitter. It's soothing to be able to throw axes into trees for handholds. The others shy away from you, but they always have and always will.

You are reaped at sixteen. They shove you forwards, still in that damn red dress, onto the stage, and make you stand with your back straight as no one dares to whisper in case that counts as volunteering. The boy they call up is eighteen and two and a half feet taller than you; you might be sixteen but half of the thirteen-year-olds are bigger.

The only people who see you off are Father and Heather, your baby cousin. She spends most of the hour in your lap and is almost not convinced to get out of it when you have to go. You ride the train out to the Capitol, promising no one that you'll come back. You don't like lying.

The real Games begin the second you step onto this strange city's concrete. You are so tiny, smaller and slighter than everyone else. You act weak because, in comparison, you look weak; in truth, you probably have more force behind your punches than most of them, but it doesn't matter. You look weak, therefore they expect you to be weak. You can kill them all later.

The Games pass in a blur. It's a forest like the one back in 7, so you have no problems with survival. The second you're sure no one will be able to pick up that it's you, you start thinning the herd. Throwing an ax or knife into someone isn't really that different from throwing them into trees. It's amazing how readily the blood flows, almost as if it has been waiting for this moment to betray its body.

You win and come back a stranger to the girl who left. Your victory wreath ends up on Ash's grave. Heather asks who's buried there and you are too busy attempting not to cry to answer. The nightmares grow worse. Some nights, you go out and sit in front of the now blank screens like you are a little kid again. Sometimes, you can almost feel Ash next to you, his hand on yours, his head on your shoulder as he waits for something to mock. A part of you stays every time you get up; on the really bad nights, you think the best part of you has been stuck there since he died.

You're wearing a red dress, not your red dress but a Capitol one with a low neckline and swooping hem, when Snow first propositions you. You tell him no. When he asks again, you say no. When he threatens everyone you love, you laugh in his face. Your mother died over a decade ago and your father could kill anyone he damn well pleases.

Father dies. Aunt Irma dies. Uncle Rick dies. Heather, who's barely two and shines brighter than the sun, dies. You decide red isn't your color. The Peacekeepers grow to expect you sitting in the square when they do midnight rounds. You're not sure that's a bad thing.

The first time you hear that damn nickname, you laugh. Katniss is the Girl on Fire and you are the Girl Who Burned.

Everything after that proves you right.


End file.
